Just Beyond the River

Domino;
2004

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If there's a new folk movement afoot, nobody told James Yorkston-- the old one seems to suit the Scottish singer/songwriter and his backing band, The Athletes, just fine. Songs such as the delicate, dirge-like "Banjo #2" and the gently wistful "Hotel" are redolent with both leaf-covered Celtic soil and voices that echo over the moors: Anne Briggs, Nick Drake, Fairport Convention. "The peat catches light," Yorkston observes, softly as ever, on the jig-like "Shipwreckers". Yorkston even came to prominence thanks to English folkie John Martyn, who played Moving Up Country on radio and brought the youngster on tour.

Yet Yorkston isn't a traditionalist merely for tradition's sake. Like Sufjan Stevens' Seven Swans, Just Beyond the River is an artful, slow-building work-- with banjos! Whereas Stevens' latest makes Christianity safe for hipsterdom, Yorkston's record creates a bucolic, timeless world where magic remains a recent memory. What lies behind the river? For Yorkston, it's the terrifying present with its ever-shrinking family units and a lack of emotional solace casting a fraught shadow over even the most idyllic melody.

Four Tet's Kieran Hebden produced the records and makes near-perfect use of Yorkston's deep voice, which sounds like sad-folkie Beck with a touch of Ray Davies lilt. The vocals lie just low enough beneath the John Fahey guitars, traditional bouzoukis, and occasional strings that it takes several listens for lyrics like, "Look beyond my need for clamor/ My clumsy touch and Catholic roving eye," to unwrap themselves like the gift they are. Honest, understated songwriting makes "Hermitage" one of this year's most poignant breakup songs: "Take your chances on the wide and open shores/ Pull together all your dreams and make them yours," Yorkston tells a lover who criticizes his coldness.

The album winds to a close with "The Snow It Melts the Soonest", a track on which the tension between Yorkston's faerie realm and encroaching modernity finally explodes. Yorkston heroine Briggs recorded this traditional folk song a cappella, filling it with her delightfully unaffected melisma. In Yorkston's version, the tune drones, pounds, and jabbers in a language that somehow bridges the rest of the album to Hebden's work. It also leaves Yorkston's options tantalizingly open for his next album.